In the 1960's, folk music was hot and everyone who could had a guitar to strum and sing along with their friends. I was in high school and I didn’t have a guitar but my sister, who was working her way through university, had a cheap guitar she would let me borrow. It had a tinny sound and the strings bit painfully into your fingertips when you chorded ... but it was a guitar.

Christmas came and my sister had no money to buy gifts. So she gave me her guitar. She had tears in her eyes, partly because she was so happy to give me something I wanted so much, but also because it was her own guitar she was giving away.

Six months later, she was walking down the sidewalk when she walked by some guy loading up his car. He was moving, driving 3000 miles across-country, and he could only take what would fit into his little MG sports car. His guitar did not fit in. He asked my sister if she would take it ... for free.

Of course she would. She took the guitar home and when she opened up the case, it was a Martin Classical guitar, with soft nylon strings that never bit into fingertips and the sweetest richest dulcet sound you’ve ever hear. The type of guitar that many famous folk music performers used. Today, a guitar of that quality would be worth over $4000.

WE are our karma. It is the imprints that we make within ourselves, the imprints that make us who and how we are. We attract to ourselves that which matches what we have put into ourselves. So remember this the next time you hope someone suffers .. you are creating bad karmic imprints in yourself when you think this.

“Throughout your life, every action you take, every thought you have, impacts your subtle mind, leaving a sort of imprint. Each imprint becomes a cause that eventually generates its own particular effect. Collectively, these imprints form the engine that generates karma. Thus, karma is not a judgment, nor an imposition, not even an external law, but simply the inevitable result of your own thoughts and actions.

The effect is not immediate. The seeds of our karma remain dormant within us until conditions arise that permit it to generate. According to Tibetans, this may take several lifetimes, but it is inevitable.”

(“Tibetan Magic and Mysticism” by J.H. Brennan)